After I fired it back up, it turns out that the reason that "the Hitachi drive couldn't have been quieter" was that the rear fan wasn't running. Made it very quiet indeed!

After it was up for a few hours, I felt safe enough to put the rear screws back in the cover. It was then I noticed how hot the case was directly above the HD.

I lifted the cover up and saw that the fan was perfectly still. I flicked it with my finger and it immediately started spinning. I then checked the temp in the System menu and it was 71 degrees.

After a while the temp came back down to normal and I hoped it was a fluke. But I frequently checked the temperature after that and when it happened again, I ordered a new fan from Weaknees. When I removed the original fan, I noticed that the red power lead had slipped out of its channel to the front of the fan and had been pinched between the fan and the rear case grill when originally installed. The pinched portion was really flattened.

Installed the new fan and I've been fine since. But it does make me wonder how long that fan had been malfunctioning and if heat was the real reason my 1TB HD had started to make clicking noises in the first place.

Let that be a learning experience: Checking the temperature and checking for a spinning fan should always be among the first steps taken when troubleshooting issues with the Tivo(any other type computer also, electronics, etc).

Just another data point to add to the conversation: I also recently purchased the WD20EARS drive (mfg May 2011), however, I was successful in changing the AAM setting to 128 using the latest version of HDDScan (3.3). For those of you having trouble, make sure you have the latest version of the software and remember to run it as an administrator (if you have Windows 7, like me).

Let us know how it goes after you fill up your drive. When I first did my expansions, I recorded on both channels during the day just to fill up my drive faster, so that I could confirm the expansion really worked and to figure out exactly how much recording space I really had. Starting from scratch, it still took more than a week to fill it all up!

OK, to follow up on my post. After 2 months, I started getting the "Guide has run out" message and then the S03 error on my TIVO HD. I received the same error when I had my drive expanded by ebay dude. I used the ebay dude twice and eventually the 2TB drive always gets the S03 error. I suspect the S03 error is due to the 128M swap space but never figured out to expand the drive and swap space. I think I have a solution now.

I just expanded my drive again but with a 1G swap file. This method works if you have a 16th partition called Apple_free that is preventing JMFS from expanding your drive.

1. Make sure the source drive is up to date with all updates and guide info before you begin.

2. Copy the 1TB drive to 2TB drive using Winmfs and a custom swap size. I used 1G, enter "1024" in the box. Do not expand when the mfscopy completes.

3. Download a hex editor called iBored, I used ver 1.1.8. This program lets you directly edit the partition map on the disk. This software has templates and understands the Apple Partition Map format. You can view the partition data with the tool while you make changes. The partition map is stored as 1 partition per block so go to block 16 (partition 16, the Apple_free partition) and erase block 16 only. The tool has an erase block feature so erase block 16 length 1. Check the length it defaults to the whole drive. Now, go to partitions 1-15 and change the total number of partitions from 16 to 15, you have to write each block when the change is made. When you are done, you will have a 2TB drive with 15 partitions. Be extremely careful using this tool, it is very powerful!

4. Use JMFS to expand the drive to the full 2TB capacity.

5. Use MFS Live 1.4 and run pdisk on the new 2TB drive. Change something so you can write the partition map back to the drive. I changed the name of the /var partition to "/var". You need pdisk to think something was changed so it will write the partition map. Write the changes.

I've moded 2 tivos already. My current setup is a THD with 1TB drive. I'm almost maxing this out and want 2TB. I know I can just add another 1TB external but that seams like a lot of trouble if I can just use JMFS to copy-expand and WINMFS to supersize it.

My question is that it looks like a few guys have upgraded their THD from 160GIG to 1TB and then upgraded the 1TB to 2TB without having to lose all their shows.

Is the only thing screwing this up the apple partion that's created when people originally used WINMFS to upgrade from the original 160gig?

2nd question is a follow up from above where the guy asked if he can use a 2.5TB drive to gain more space. Does this work? Will JMFS expand it past the 2TB barrier and make it like 2.26TB?

I DON'T CARE ABOUT COST! I just want to know if it will give that extra .26TB of space. For some people its worth the extra $20 or $30 bucks.

Well, if cost is no object, you can always add an additional TiVo box--get and subscribe a new Premiere and you'll get not just more hard drive space but two more tuners (four more if you go with Premiere Elite), and upgrading that new box is very easy (as you know). Two TiVos on one TV is an easy setup unless you don't have a free input on your TV or receiver.

But as far as which TiVos other than Premiere that JMFS works with, that I'm not sure of. All the Series 3 and HDTiVo upgrades I did were just with MFSLive, not JMFS.

Well, if cost is no object, you can always add an additional TiVo box--get and subscribe a new Premiere and you'll get not just more hard drive space but two more tuners (four more if you go with Premiere Elite), and upgrading that new box is very easy (as you know). Two TiVos on one TV is an easy setup unless you don't have a free input on your TV or receiver.

But as far as which TiVos other than Premiere that JMFS works with, that I'm not sure of. All the Series 3 and HDTiVo upgrades I did were just with MFSLive, not JMFS.

Your joke of a response wasn't very helpful. I meant the cost of a 2.5TB vs 2TB drive is what I don't care about. i.e. the $20-$30 more for the extra .5TB

Anybody else know if it will give you that extra .2TB of space?

Also on a typical 2TB drive I bet you lose a lot of space to formatting don't you? I think my 2TB drive on my computer ended up with only 1.87TB of usable space.

I think, when expanding from stock to 1TB using WinMFS some drives end up with this little apple_free space. I believe these are the drives that cannot be expanded any further with WinMFS or JMFS. WinMFS cannot add the required 2 partitions and apparently JMFS thinks apple_free is a real partition and leaves it as partiton 16 on the expanded drive which results in 17 partitions like this:

However, I finally did get my drive to expand with JMFS but I'm not sure how long it will work because I manually enlarged partition 15. Here is what I did:
- Copy 1TB drive to 2TB with JMFS copy, do not expand
- Delete partition 15 "MFS Media by Winmfs"
- Recreate partition 15 "MFS Media by Winmfs" but include the apple_free space (no more apple_free partition 16)
- Put 2TB drive in THD, it thinks the external drive is missing, let it repair the problem
- Expand 2TB drive with JMFS, no errors
- Put 2TB drive in TIVO, boots with no issues, 318hrs

I tried to put partition 15 back to the original size and make apple_free be partition 17 but the TIVO was caught in the endless reboot loop. I can post partition maps for each step if anyone is interested. I'm currently trying to duplicate the process on a second 2TB drive with a 1GB swap space. It'll be a while before I can get the maps.

After trying this have you intentionally recorded enough shows to fill up the drive to see if there are any ill side effects?

Has anybody used a stock 160gig to copy and expand to a 2tb internal THD and then filled up the drive to see if there are any ill side effects?

I've moded 2 tivos already. My current setup is a THD with 1TB drive. I'm almost maxing this out and want 2TB. I know I can just add another 1TB external but that seams like a lot of trouble if I can just use JMFS to copy-expand and WINMFS to supersize it.

My question is that it looks like a few guys have upgraded their THD from 160GIG to 1TB and then upgraded the 1TB to 2TB without having to lose all their shows.

Is the only thing screwing this up the apple partion that's created when people originally used WINMFS to upgrade from the original 160gig?

Yes, when I upgraded from 160GB to 1TB I had a 16th apple_free partition at the end of the drive. JMFS sees this a real partition and will not expand the drive any further. If you only have 15 partitions, JMFS is all you need.

I've expand my drive from 1TB to 2TB 3 times. I used ebay dude twice and JMFS once. Eventually the guide stops updating and I get the S03 error. Once that happens, you're hosed. I wanted to enlarge the swap partition to 1GB at the same time, that's why I had to use the more involved method. Time will tell if the larger swap partition fixes the S03 error. It seems that many people have no issues using the small swap space. I have well over 100 season passes, probably as many wishlists and hundreds of saved shows. I don't know if that is typical of other users.

About your second question, I think you probably can go >2TB. If I didn't already have two 2TB drives, I would have tried with a 2.5TB.

Well i pulled my winmfs upgraded THD 1TB drive and checked it with winMFS and it has 15 partitions.
[IMG][/IMG]
By the lurking i've been doing I think that since I don't have the 16th partition with the 15th partion as the "apple" one I should be good to use JMFS to copy/expand, and then winmfs to supersize?

I have 2 backup 2TB drives to my desktops 2TB "data" drive. And since i don't have any patience i'm stealing one of the backups and trying the upgrade tonight. I should have results in the morning.

I was planning on buying a 2.5TB drive to get maximum 2.2TB space, but I don't feel like waiting. I might try the 2.5TB in a few weeks.

Okay I did copy and expand with JMFS and made a boot disc with wdidle3.exe on it. I've read a few different steps from here. One says to typ[e wdidle3 /d and then it says idle timer is set to 62 mins, that fround from herehttp://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb...60#post5616160

But i've also read i should type wdidle3 /s300 so that "idle3 timer is enabled and set to 300 seconds"

Well here is a recap, I used JMFS to copy and expand. Lucky for me I didn't have the 16th partition.

I tried using "hdparm -M <device>". to change the AAM settings to 128 on my drive but I couldn't get it to work. I could get it to display info about my drive by typing hdparm -i, but with -m I could not get it to set the AAM to 128.

I tried hddscan as well, ran it in administrator mode and got an error.

Next i downloaded the hitachi feature tools and was able to set AAM to 128. I thought i read info somewhere that setting this feature can decrease the life of the drive, any truth to that?

Finally I booted off my wdidle3 boot cd and ran "wdidle3 /d". I read on other places that you're suppose to type wdidle3 /s300. Don't know if it matters. (Later I did a menu soft reboot and it booted up just fine.)

I then used winmfs to supersize, threw the drive into Tina (my tivo's name), and now I have 318 hours in the information screen.

One thing i'm confused about. If JMFS can expand a THD drive to more than 1TB, what is limiting the winmfs software to 1TB? Does the developer of winmfs just not want to alter the code to make this work?

One thing i'm confused about. If JMFS can expand a THD drive to more than 1TB, what is limiting the winmfs software to 1TB? Does the developer of winmfs just not want to alter the code to make this work?

The difference is probably the "supersize". That's recovering some of the drive that TiVo had set aside for its own use (commercials, etc.) and using it instead for shows.

One thing i'm confused about. If JMFS can expand a THD drive to more than 1TB, what is limiting the winmfs software to 1TB? Does the developer of winmfs just not want to alter the code to make this work?

I suspect you are correct in that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ThreeSoFar

The difference is probably the "supersize". That's recovering some of the drive that TiVo had set aside for its own use (commercials, etc.) and using it instead for shows.

That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever since, after using JMFS to create a 2TB drive for a THD, you must use WinMFS to do the supersize.

I'm stuck. Bottom line, the upgraded Tivo keeps rebooting even after using WDIDLE3.

I have an HD Tivo (not the older, original Series 3).

I am trying to use JMFS to upgrade to a WD25EURS drive. Using JMFS, I copied the image from the original drive, and then I expanded the new drive. All that reported that it worked flawlessly. I supersized the drive using WINMFS. That went fine, too. Then I ran WDIDLE3 and disabled the timer. Then I used the /R function to check, and the timer was reported as disabled.

So, I put the new drive in the Tivo, and it just kept rebooting.

I realized that I was using WDIDLE3 version 1.0, so I got WDIDLE version 1.05 and put it on a floppy. I tried that using both the /D setting and the /S300 setting. With either setting, the Tivo keeps rebooting.

I have upgraded six HD Tivos and several more Series 2 Tivos in the past, using 1.5 TB WD green drives, so I do have experience with WINMFS and WDIDLE3.

Of course, this is a WD25EURS drive, not a WD20EURS drive. Using JMFS, with the WD25EURS drive, the expansion did report more than 2TB for those who were wondering. I think it said 2.19 TB.

I just bought this drive about a month ago, so its manufacture date must be in 2011.

I am trying to use JMFS to upgrade to a WD25EURS drive. Using JMFS, I copied the image from the original drive, and then I expanded the new drive. All that reported that it worked flawlessly. I supersized the drive using WINMFS. That went fine, too. Then I ran WDIDLE3 and disabled the timer. Then I used the /R function to check, and the timer was reported as disabled.

So, I put the new drive in the Tivo, and it just kept rebooting.

I think I've read here that no current TiVo models can address a drive larger than 2TB (or maybe slightly more) even if you don't expect to use all of it. It may be an OS limitation. I don't remember whether rebooting is the expected failure mode. If you can get your hands on a 2TB drive, try using that.

Well, I downloaded and burned a copy of jmfs rev 104 to try to use one of the $75 2TB Seagates Best Buy had on sale last week in an S3 HD I recently acquired (had to fix the power supply first).

I tried using WinMFS to copy a stock S3 HD (TCD652160) 's 160GB hard drive to a 2TB drive, increasing the swap partition to 1GB (1024MB), and then letting it expand when it offered to, and what I wound up with was the partitions from the stock drive (with the bigger swap), plus another partition pair with the media one being about 1TB. In other words, approximately 1TB + 160GB

The mfsinfo of WinMFS showed the partition layout with the 1TB as the last partition, and no "apple free" partition to account for the last 800-something GB. I don't know if that's because WinMFS gave it a partition table/map that was misinformed as to the drive's true size or what.

Okay, so took the original 160GB drive, used backup pipe restore off the MFS Live cd with the swap partition option set to 1024MB and included the expand option going onto a 500GB drive.

That gave me the 1TB swap, 6MFS partitions (3 pairs), and no Apple Free partition on the end of the drive. Or so I thought, didn't show up when I ran pdisk -l

Used jmfs to copy the 500 to a 2TB, and when it finally finished, I let it do the expansion as well.

Got the original 15 partitions, a damned Apple Free partition of 4.0M, and a 17th MFS media partition of 1.4 or thereabouts TB.

Put it in the HD, booted, got the "missing external" screen, told it to divorce it, it did, rebooted, seems to work fine, but sysinfo only shows 70 HD hours or 606 SD hours. I'm guessing what it divorced was the 17th partition jmfs added.

Unless comer releases an update with a choose your swap size option, looks like I need a 161GB drive to act as man in the middle. There's probably a Maxtor 160GB that's just bigger enough than the WD 160GB to do the trick, but I don't have one of those handy. I've got a 200GB Maxie, maybe I could try again with a 40GB swap partition.

==========================================================

Okay, that was the story a couple of days ago, when I first wrote that.

Since then I tried using the 200GB with a number of different values for the swap partition and could never get rid of the Apple Free partition that screws up using jmfs.

Tried deleting and creating partitions with pdisk, never got anywhere.

Stumbled onto something last night that seems to be working.

Used the MFS Live cd to copy the original 160GB drive to the 500GB drive.

It's a Seagate with an LBA number of 976773168

Previously I'd tried a -s option value of 1000 or 1024 for the swap size.

This time, for some reason, I did

Backup -Tao - /dev/sda | restore -s 999 -pi - /dev/sdb

the important part, it turned out, being the 999

I suppose I did it with MFS Live 'cause it seems to do it a little faster than WinMFS, either of which does in minutes what jmfs takes hours to do.

Didn't run pdisk -l afterwards for fear of jinxing it somehow.

Rebooted, took out the MFS Live cd, let it boot into XP and loaded WinMFS.

Selected sdb, clicked on mfsinfo, it showed a big Apple Free partition on the end.

Clicked on mfsadd, let it expand, clicked mfsinfo again to see what size Apple Free partition I wound up with, and, lo and behold, hallelujah, happy days are here again, partition 15 was the last one on the drive. No Apple Free partition and a swap partition of almost 1GB. Actually 999.0M If I'd used -s 1000 I think it would say 1000.0M and if I'd used -s 1024 I think it'd be 1.0G

Closed program, logged off XP, powered down, hooked up 2TB drive, rebooted with jmfs cd in drive, used it to copy 500GB to 2TB (it only took several or more hours), used it to expand when it finally finished, powered down, put MFS Live cd back in, rebooted, checked drive with pdisk, have 3 MFS pairs plus a single MFS partition (the 16th).

Put the 2TB in the S3 HD, it booted right up (to the extent that a TiVo will boot right up), and seems to be behaving itself.

Will record a bunch of stuff and see.

I probably could have used WinMFS to do the original copy from the 160 to the 500, specifying 999 for the swap size, and gotten the same results, but that's an experiment for another day. Like after I fix the ignition on the lawn mower, rebuild the carb on the generator, etc, etc, etc.

So the moral to your post is jmfs doesn't make custom swap partitions? Is that what we learned?

Well, that, and that sometimes you can get the swap size you want and still be able to use jmfs to go over 1TB on a single drive on an HD, despite jmfs's lack of any built-in swap resizing function.

Of course it's only been 12 hours or so, so I'm not prepared to declare it an unqualified success just yet, but after beating my head against the wall for a few days over this, it's nice to have it at least look like it might work out in the long run without having had to spend a couple of years learning how to hex edit every last byte.

Well, that, and that sometimes you can get the swap size you want and still be able to use jmfs to go over 1TB on a single drive on an HD, despite jmfs's lack of any built-in swap resizing function.

Of course it's only been 12 hours or so, so I'm not prepared to declare it an unqualified success just yet, but after beating my head against the wall for a few days over this, it's nice to have it at least look like it might work out in the long run without having had to spend a couple of years learning how to hex edit every last byte.

Let's hope you're good to go. When I upgraded my 2TB using WinMFS JFMS wouldn't recognize the drive. So because JMFS recognized your drive says you're off to a good start...

I never could get Supersize to work in WinMFS. When I enable it, the Tivo constantly reboots. When I disable it, the new drive boots up fine and does not reboot constantly. I believe that my original failure was due to trying to Supersize in WinMFS. When I later went step by step, inserted the new drive in the HD Tivo and tested, Supersize (in WinMFS) was the only hang up.

I had ordered a WD25EURS before the huge price increase. Now, I will have to wait until the price comes down to get more drives.

Also, I learned that I could back up the original 160 GB drive using WinMFS, then restore it to the 2.5 TB or 2.0 TB drive using the swap size of 999. (Thank you to the person who posted that!!!!) Then, I expanded the drive in JMFS. I did not have the Apple partition problem, so I did not need the in-between step of using a 500 GB drive.

If you restore in WinMFS, do not Add or Expand in WinMFS. Just restore the 160 GB image. Then go to JMFS.

When everything was done, nothing that I tried could get Supersize to work in WinMFS. I had used this option many times for a 1.5 TB drive, but just could not get it to work on the 2.0 or 2.5 TB drives. I had to turn it off to keep the drives from rebooting.

I think that the 2.0 TB drive yielded 318 HD hours, which is the same that someone else reported who said they got Supersize to work. I think the 2.5 TB drive yielded 339 HD hours.

For the 2.0 TB drive I used a green Seagate that I got at Fry's.

Here is another interesting point. I believe, but am not certain, that the very first time I tried to format the 2.5 TB drive, JMFS told me that it 2.19 TBs had been used. Then I finally got Comcast to pair the cable card and repeated the process, I could not get more than 2.14 TBs.

As to the issue of WDIdle3, I did this on the 2.5 TB drive before realizing that this step was unnecessary. So, I could not undo that. I did not perform this step on the 2.0 TB Seagate drive, and it was not necessary.

Originally, I was using WDIdle3 ver 1.0. I also tried WDIdle3 ver 1.4. The more recent version did not prevent the rebooting, one way or another on the 2.5 TB drive. Only disabling Supersize, stopped the reboot problem.

I never could get Supersize to work in WinMFS. When I enable it, the Tivo constantly reboots. When I disable it, the new drive boots up fine and does not reboot constantly. I believe that my original failure was due to trying to Supersize in WinMFS. When I later went step by step, inserted the new drive in the HD Tivo and tested, Supersize (in WinMFS) was the only hang up.

I had ordered a WD25EURS before the huge price increase. Now, I will have to wait until the price comes down to get more drives.

Also, I learned that I could back up the original 160 GB drive using WinMFS, then restore it to the 2.5 TB or 2.0 TB drive using the swap size of 999. (Thank you to the person who posted that!!!!) Then, I expanded the drive in JMFS. I did not have the Apple partition problem, so I did not need the in-between step of using a 500 GB drive.

If you restore in WinMFS, do not Add or Expand in WinMFS. Just restore the 160 GB image. Then go to JMFS.

When everything was done, nothing that I tried could get Supersize to work in WinMFS. I had used this option many times for a 1.5 TB drive, but just could not get it to work on the 2.0 or 2.5 TB drives. I had to turn it off to keep the drives from rebooting.

I think that the 2.0 TB drive yielded 318 HD hours, which is the same that someone else reported who said they got Supersize to work. I think the 2.5 TB drive yielded 339 HD hours.

For the 2.0 TB drive I used a green Seagate that I got at Fry's.

Here is another interesting point. I believe, but am not certain, that the very first time I tried to format the 2.5 TB drive, JMFS told me that it 2.19 TBs had been used. Then I finally got Comcast to pair the cable card and repeated the process, I could not get more than 2.14 TBs.

As to the issue of WDIdle3, I did this on the 2.5 TB drive before realizing that this step was unnecessary. So, I could not undo that. I did not perform this step on the 2.0 TB Seagate drive, and it was not necessary.

Originally, I was using WDIdle3 ver 1.0. I also tried WDIdle3 ver 1.4. The more recent version did not prevent the rebooting, one way or another on the 2.5 TB drive. Only disabling Supersize, stopped the reboot problem.

Where to start, where to start.

Running wdidle 1, 2, 3, or whatever version, is done to disable intellipark, or at least set the time before it kicks in to several minutes instead of several seconds.

The reason to do this is because if the TiVo soft boots (i.e., restarts without power being shut off), the drive notices the controller isn't talking to it, and if intellipark is working the way it comes set from the factory, after about 8 seconds of this it parks the heads and goes into a sleep mode.

By the time the TiVo has booted up enough to query the drive, the drive is asleep. The TiVo doesn't know about this, it just thinks the drive is absent or non-responsive, so it reboots again, which turns off the controller's request for the drive to spin back up, so it parks the heads again and spins back down, so that when the TiVo's ready for it again, it's not ready for the TiVo.

If it were a hard boot (pull the power plug and then stick it back in), the drive will be awake and spun up when the TiVo calls on it.

Since a TiVo drive is always working, it's always awake, so intellipark isn't going to cause it to reboot. But if it soft reboots for some other reason, like the TiVo got an update and needs to reboot from the alternate partitions or something, intellipark is going to keep that from succeeding.

The 999 was so that I could use an intermediate drive to get a larger swap size, and setting it to 1000 or 1024 left me with a little extra at the end which got turned in to an Apple Free partition, which prevents jmfs from succeeding, because it doesn't understand that an Apple Free partition isn't really a partition and doesn't need to be protected from being overwritten.

I discovered it by accident, and still don't fully understand how or why it worked.

And I don't understand how you're managing not to get bitten by the Apple Free partition problem, but congrats.

Intellipark is strictly a Western Digital thing, so you're correct there's no need (or ability) to do anything to the Seagate.

Were you trrying to use WinMFS, and then jmfs, and then going back to use WinMFS to Supersize, or using WinMFS, including Supersizing, and then finishing with jmfs?

I never could get Supersize to work in WinMFS. When I enable it, the Tivo constantly reboots. When I disable it, the new drive boots up fine and does not reboot constantly. I believe that my original failure was due to trying to Supersize in WinMFS. When I later went step by step, inserted the new drive in the HD Tivo and tested, Supersize (in WinMFS) was the only hang up..

I ran into this also with a Hatachi 2TB drive. I didn't bother posting about it since I seemed to be the only one having the problem.

I think that the 2.0 TB drive yielded 318 HD hours, which is the same that someone else reported who said they got Supersize to work. I think the 2.5 TB drive yielded 339 HD hours.

For the 2.0 TB drive I used a green Seagate that I got at Fry's.

Here is another interesting point. I believe, but am not certain, that the very first time I tried to format the 2.5 TB drive, JMFS told me that it 2.19 TBs had been used. Then I finally got Comcast to pair the cable card and repeated the process, I could not get more than 2.14 TBs.

It is interesting that you were able to get a TiVo to use a 2.5TB drive, since TiVos (running their current version of Linux) aren't supposed to be able to address any drive larger than 2TB (or maybe 2.19TB). But it would be more of a breakthrough if somebody could get a TiVo to actually use all of a 2.5TB or 3TB drive.